Ask and ye shall receive.
Posted by HarbingerZero on August 14, 2008
So I was whining about no MMO demos. Publically. Which means of course that I would have to be put to shame in some public form.
So I’m going over the two questions with my brother last night and he says “Well, maybe we should do the open Beta. Its only 99 cents at Target.”
Who knew? So today I picked up my copy of open beta for WAR. Now I saw a very bitter post about paying to play beta some time ago in the gaming world, but I’m pretty sure it was aimed at Vanguard, and lets be honest, they didn’t exactly warn you ahead of time that you were paying for a (second) open beta that essentially occured post launch. Frankly, I don’t mind paying for beta with an MMO, if it means a smoother and better launch for the company, and if it means I get a feel for the game in advance.
I did do beta for EQOA: Frontiers, and it was a mixed experience for me. On the one hand, I was diligant, logging bugs and making suggestions, and playing the new stuff and enjoying every minute of it. On the other hand, it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Everyone knew that the new armor graphics were crappy. Nobody wanted their dark elf to be wearing fragging jedi robes. Especialy when they had spent hours farming a rare mob for that rare black or orange or whatever robe, only to discover that the new graphics also included changing the colors of the robes. My Elf Magician went from wearing an awesome embroidered blue robe that I had worked hard to get my grubby hands on, to wearing a brown POS padawan outfit. So you knew the bad was coming, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Well, except leave. Which I did.
Anyway, so my brother reiterated all that I did about the pros and cons of jumping on the WAR bandwagon. He also pointed out two new things.
One: The Two Questions are interelated. Because I can’t afford a Station Pass AND a WAR subscription.
Two: The economy is another really good reason to get in on the ground floor of a game. In EQ2 we struggled to make ends meet and keep decent armor and weapons equipped because the prices were so inflated. This is not helped by the insanely crappy quest rewards in EQ2. To get any sort of decent quest reward you *have* to be farming one of the group areas. Not smart, IMHO.
To start WAR from the beginning means a chance to stay ahead of that curve, and that’s attractive.
